Keep this photograph in mind next time you go to your local store and buy food of any kind. If you lived in the Alaska bush before World War II you got your food once a year! Even today, the bulk of the food coming into small villages comes in by barge–and once a year. Transportation costs to and throughout Alaska are expensive so food and supplies have to come in bulk. Worse, Alaska’s waters – salt and fresh – are only ice-free for about 100 days a year. Barges with food usually stay south of the Aleutian Islands until early June waiting for the Bering Sea ice to break.  The loaded barges then race up the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers with their supplies. Then they have to be out of the river systems and south of the Aleutian Island before the surface of the Bering Sea freezes in late September or early October. The 1920 photo shows river steamers with their barges. While this river is ice-free in the photo, in a few months the ice will be 20 feet thick from shore to shore.